- Systems are fundamentally unique, and play differently. My second system was described as a mining area, and was populated by a ton of illegal miners that fled upon encountering me, allowing me to loot everything they couldn't take with them. Of course, I chased them down and killed them anyways, but the great difference in how stations behave would work well in Transcendence if implemented.

- Early game loot is a lot more unique. You aren't going to consistently find the same things in the first system.

- A lot of the loot seems like it would have a use, but I don't know what that use would be. If it's just trade goods with flavor text, the flavor text does its job.

- Illegal items aren't confiscated, but most stations won't buy them. I haven't figured out where to sell them yet, but given the ease of avoiding customs in Transcendence, I prefer this system.

- Exhausting an enemy's ammo supply still works, but every enemy I've encountered also has a non - ammo weapon, and tracking missiles show up a lot earlier.

- Item stats aren't displayed. This is truer to roguelike design, but makes buying items without knowing what they do a lot riskier for new players.

- Hiding on stations isn't as viable. Guards aren't aggressive, and most station designs have gaps that let enemies shoot you through them.

- A lot of enemies have randomly selected leveled equipment. You never really know what you're going to end up with when you take on an enemy ship. This also makes pirates feel more realistic.

- Stopping is easier due to the 8 - facing system. There's a lot less guesswork involved, which mitigates the harm of the '.' key not being there.

- The game features a lot of mechanics that Transcendence doesn't have. Some ships cloak and deploy drones.

I eventually died to a freighter with a close range tracking weapon because I forgot to repair my armor. I had a great deal of money, but I haven't yet figured out how to spend it. As in Transcendence, quality armor is a good investment, but high repair costs and low armor health make shields both viable as a defensive strategy and vital even if you have good armor. You won't be turning them off.

I'm considering the possibility of loading the game in something that can save the program's state, jury - rigging a save system out of that. Will update with success if any.

Update: Theoretically, this can be done using a virtual machine. I will update when I acquire one.

Updates on what I have discovered:
- Systems aren't stored before loading, but some are preset.
- George hid secret items in the areas around those evil green things that steal your fuel. I have yet to kill one, but so help me Oracus, I intend to kill all of them.
- The secret items are special. The game guilted me into refusing to sell them for 4,000 credits.
- The long range scanner is something you have to find and install. It is what you use to trade missiles for time.
- The visual display enhancer is also present, and does nothing but clutter the screen.
- All of the barrels do something cool. There are a lot of them, and I haven't found them all.
- There are some abandoned stations scattered around, occupied by enemies. I'll have to backtrack and check out all that cool stuff I couldn't get to earlier.
- The Arena is a challenge.
- The Black Market is in the game. I would imagine that one of the ROM chips I found for sale would let me access them.
- A station whose name ends with "Stronghold" also won't let me in without authorization, but I don't know whether it's Black Market affiliated.
- The game has impressive length. I have gotten farther than anyone running permadeath could reasonably be expected to go, and I'm still all but certain that I haven't even hit the halfway point.
- I should have bought a dual cannon. The frustration isn't worth the 3300 credits.
- The omnidirectional laser cannon is present in this game, but I haven't gotten to test it.
- Remember the encounters in Transcendence? The ones you can splatter in a second or just run from? Frontier throws squadrons of three of the deadliest things it can get away with throwing at you, two at a time.
- The lore for the Nakimura Corporation headquarters isn't there, or I built something wrong.
- The CLA Shipyards don't drop any lore, but they drop a lot of items. They're surrounded by turrets and spawn tons of fast, deadly warships.
- The Plasma Cannon is not like its namesake in Transcendence. It is a rapid, powerful, ammo - intensive weapon that's definitely worth the price.
- Good armor is worth it, even when you can save and reload whenever you want.
- There are systems I'm never going to get to explore fully. One of my games saw me entering a system populated by a gang of pirates that terrorized the locals, who warned me upon entry of their presence. It's not in this run.
- I still want to kill the green things.
- They are abominations unto all that is holy.

- The Smartcannon is (still) a very useful weapon, but Anvil missiles are more plentiful and more reliable
- The shipping company increases both reward and difficulty as the player continues to win, and will lock him out after 3 failures. I'm sure it's possible to get past the 6k mission, but I would imagine it requires more retries than any rational actor would be willing to provide.
- It involves multiple enemies with EMP weapons and something that looks like a Lamplighter. There is no EMP immunity in this game, and the Lamplighter lookalike has frightening DPS.
- I've encountered a pirate syndicate system and cleared it out. Hell of a fight. The locals were grateful, and gave me a Smartcannon.
- I've encountered another system with abandoned stations and an archaeological station. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with the latter, but I killed the enemies guarding the abandoned stations and looted them.
- The 'Stronghold' stations are military, not Black Market. I found a military ID in some wreckage.
- I am looking for an EI pod launcher to try out the pods. They're not good for selling and very heavy, but I imagine sentinels could be really cool to have around.
- The green things have yet to show up again. I think they have come to fear me.
- They'll get theirs when I backtrack to get revenge on the Scorpions in the Arena.

My current setup is made up of the default shield(because I have no ins key, and changing out shields would break the interface), a Plasma Cannon, and a launcher loaded with Anvils. The missiles can draw out enemy ships, and the PC can slaughter anything that gets close, from gunships to shipyards. There does not appear to be a device limit - I've got the cargo hold, a T2 drive, and a T2 reactor, in addition to my shield, weapons, and launcher. I've also got the Smartcannon, because it's somewhat cheap to keep loaded and I can sometimes find ammo for it, but I hardly ever make use of it. A good armor strategy is to take the best non - laser armor and give it laser reflection.

I beat the Arena - the final fight is fairly easy, and the prize is 10k credits. I haven't mapped out the game yet, but it's looking like the systems at least have unique names. I wonder what George meant when he said there wasn't an end. I still haven't seen some of the enemy ships from the startup screen.

I also found and installed an unknown device. I have no idea what it does. Anyone who knows, please tell me. I don't have an insert key, so I can't even look at it from my equipment screen.